Collaboration: The Strength of Many

The article “What Experienced Collaborators Say About Collaborative Writing” is, oddly enough, a sizeable collaboration between Nancy Allen, Diane Atkinson, Meg Morgan, Teresa Moore, and Craig Snow. To save time and monotony, I will merely call this eclectic group “the writers” from here on out. The writers start out by making a distinction between collaborative writing and group work. Going with the definition given by Harvey Wiener, they make the claim that “consensus is necessary to create a truly collaborative situation” (353). So if there is no consensus from all working on the project, the writers say that it is not true collaboration. A study conducted by Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford is mentioned, the writers talking about the various activities that can make up collaborative writing, such as a supervisor writing up a rough draft document for review by other. From this point on, the writers go in depth on a study they conducted about the use, characteristics, and opinions of collaborative work. The writers sought out “qualitative responses to open questions in interviews with professionals who had collaborated in a wide range of projects” (354). A total of 20 interviews conducted, covering 14 different collaborative projects, ranging from small business, university, and government sources. The projects that were discussed were proposals, books, articles, goals statements, reports, and legal briefs. Through the interviews, the writers found numerous similarities the participants’ collaborative efforts. First, they found that an “initial period of group planning was most often followed by periods of relatively independent research and drafting, during which individuals worked alone” (356). All groups reported that the most collaboration occurred at the beginning of the project and at the end, during the time of revision. Group members also tried to foresee problems that they reader may have with the document, to try and clear up the problems in advance. In all groups the “cost of collaboration most mentioned was time and ego,” the amount of time the group took and the amount of face a person had to lose (360). What differed the most between all the groups was the amount of collaboration. One example was a group leader writing a rough draft and the others comment on it. Another was two workers each making their own drafts, then try to combine them at the revision stage. Only one group composed together on a regular basis.

After their study was done, the writers found three points that were importance. The first being the function of conflict within a group. Each respondent made the remark that “conflict contributed to their creativity and to the quality of their final document” (360). The conflict made sure that “group think” did not occur, where the groups merely echo what the opinions of the leader or one individual. The second point is that working on a shared document “produces substantive interaction among members” and “shared decision-making power and responsibility for the document” (361). Finally, the writers point out how a group provides advantages over individual working by offering various areas of expertise, was not as labor intensive on one person, and the varied perspectives of group members helped foresee potential problems and build team skills. On a final note, the writers made the comment about ideas of further investigation, such as how new technologies shape collaboration, and how shared documents impact business, military, and government areas of work.

I think that the writers make some very true observations about the characteristics of collaborative works. While reading this article, I couldn’t help but think of my past experiences in collaborative projects, how the information found here related to those experiences. I would have to agree with the collaboration times set out in the article. The projects that I have worked on always start out with the group planning what will be the focus of the project, how information will be gathered, and what guidelines will be followed. Then the members usually break up to conduct their own work, whether it be research or writing. After that, there would be a predetermined time that we would all meet for revision. This has all been the standard chain of events in group projects. I would object a bit to the claim that conflict can make the project better. Although there have been times when conflicting views have made for a better final result, there have also been a few instances where the conflict has lead to the “group think” that the writers talk about. I remember a recent group project where one member was very insistent on making certain changes. The way things were going, there could have been a real conflict brewing, but I held back and made several of the changes. Although I don’t think that the changes hurt the project, it did make for a very uncomfortable and frustrating experience. Finally, I’m intrigued about the writer’s suggestion of investigating how technology can affect collaboration. I know of a few people in business who have collaborated via long-distance communication technology--video and teleconferencing. It would be interesting to see if these have led to better projects than face-to-face communication would have.